


& we leave it all behind

by inconocible



Series: as a shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Chapter 1, Discussion of Past Animal Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fear of Death, Gen, Light Angst, Slice of Life, Soft and Sweet Family Feels, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 07:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17402984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inconocible/pseuds/inconocible
Summary: “You were gonna --” Arthur starts, and he doesn’t know what to do with this information, so he just shakes his head, runs his hand over the back of his scarf-wrapped neck, amazed that this, of all the awful things that have happened to them in the week or so since fleeing Blackwater, this is the thing that Hosea’s hung up on.





	& we leave it all behind

**Author's Note:**

> can’t you see we need some time?  
> and we all sit around the fire  
> we feel a [little warmer now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q466ZPyNAo)

“Arthur,” Hosea sighs, sinking down in the chair next to him with a soft groan, clapping Arthur’s shoulder with a gloved hand.

Arthur’s sitting in front of the fire, but he’s still wearing his coat. The fire in the men’s cabin burns a little weaker than the one over in the women’s -- smaller fireplace, probably a dirtier flu. But Dutch had insisted on giving the best house in the abandoned little town to their most vulnerable folk, taking two of the smaller ones, across the way, for the hardier members of the group, so here they are, holed up in the little cabins, restless, weak, nervous, snowed in.

Arthur’s just been sitting in front of the fire, quiet, melancholy, sketching a landscape of the Blackwater camp and listening to Dutch pace a hole in the floorboards in the other room for a good hour, now. Something affectionate and warm flares inside him to feel Hosea’s hand on his shoulder, to have Hosea’s attention.

“Hey, Hosea,” Arthur says. He closes his journal, tucks it along with his pencil safely into the inner left breast pocket of his coat. “How you holdin’ up?”

“Oh, just fine,” Hosea says, but the weariness in his voice, the way his eyes are blinking heavily, the hollows in his cheekbones -- they all give Arthur pause.

Arthur’s been nervous, recently: The stiffness in the way Hosea moves, the cough that’s been rattling around in his chest, the slow fatigue that seems to weigh him down more and more each day -- all of it putting fear in the bottom of Arthur’s throat that he doesn’t want to speak, doesn’t want to name, doesn’t want to give any permission to fly free and true.

Arthur leans over a little, leans into Hosea’s touch before he fully realizes he is; doesn’t pull away from him when he does realize. Hosea’s wearing not just his coat but his scarf and gloves, too, and Arthur can’t quite tell if he’s been outdoors recently, or if he’s fixing to go.

“You sure you’re doin’ alright?” Arthur asks, looking at him sidelong, trying to keep his concern inside of him, feeling some of it slip out, anyway. “Been worryin’ ‘bout you, all this cold weather, hard ridin’, that cough you got.”

“I’ll be fine, my boy,” Hosea says.

“Okay,” Arthur says, but he doesn’t really believe him, knows he won’t quit worrying til they’re all down from this mountain, out of this snow, somewhere warm and comfortable, somewhere out West, somewhere they can all breathe a little easier. “Old man,” Arthur adds, aiming for a tease, but there’s something about it that’s a little too real, a little too close to home. Hosea barely chuckles; Arthur can’t bring himself to laugh.

Hosea’s hand slides suddenly off of Arthur’s shoulder when he turns his head and coughs, trying to cover it up with fidgeting with his scarf.

“Shit, ‘re you alright?” Arthur asks, alarmed, patting him hard on his back.

“Yeah,” Hosea manages, clearing his throat, settling back to stillness in his chair, “yeah, it’s just this damn _cold_ ,” and Arthur frowns, takes his hand back, stares into the fire for a long, uncomfortable moment, thinking about Davey and Mac and Jenny and John and --

“Listen, son,” Hosea finally says, slowly, thoughtfully, “there’s -- there’s somethin’ I’ve been meanin’ to talk with you about.”

Arthur turns his torso fully to look at him head-on. Something about Hosea, when he says _son_ like that, it’s a tell for Arthur, now, after twenty years together. He’s thinkin’ of something, something crafty and clever, maybe, or maybe something Arthur ain’t gonna be so sure of, at first. With Hosea, it could be either, or neither, but it’s something, all right.

“What?” Arthur asks warily.

Hosea looks away, into the fire, for a moment. “You wanna go have a cigarette?” he asks, glancing back at Arthur.

Arthur frowns. Whatever it is, Hosea doesn’t wanna talk about it inside, where Dutch, still pacing in the next room over, and some of the other boys, napping in the late afternoon before taking a night watch, might hear him, and that makes Arthur simultaneously more interested and more cautious.

“Sure,” Arthur says, and they get up from their chairs. Arthur pulls his gloves out of his pockets and onto his hands, picks his scarf up from the floor, wraps it around his neck, follows Hosea outside.

They’re standing under the meager awning of the back porch of the cabin, Hosea at Arthur’s left, looking out at the wind blowing the snow around in the waning sunset light. Before long, standing next to Hosea in a comfortable, companionable silence, smoking his cigarette and watching the sun go down, watching the swirl of the snow before him, Arthur has nearly forgotten why they came out here, transfixed by the glimmer of the snow in the wind. It would be so damn beautiful, he thinks, if it weren’t so goddamn cold, deadly.

Much like many of the folks in the gang, he muses, letting his thoughts spool out along the trail of cigarette smoke, drifting into the wind. This family he’s spent years riding with, the family he’s chosen, the family he knows, loves -- Dutch, Hosea, Charles, Javier, Lenny, Sean, even John, in his own way -- they’re much like this harsh beauty before him, he thinks, a certain grace to them in their souls, a poetry in their bodies, deceptively lovely in their violence.

Not Micah, though, Arthur thinks smugly. Shifty bastard wouldn’t know grace, wouldn’t know poetry or beauty, if they hit him over his head.

Hosea flicks the butt of his cigarette out into the yard, coughs, clears his throat, puts his hands in his coat pockets, and Arthur snaps out of his artist’s daydream, turns to his left to look at him.

“What’d you wanna talk about?” he asks.

Hosea sighs. “Dutch doesn’t think I shouldn’t tell you about this,” he starts softly, and _that_ sure as hell puts Arthur on alert. “But I --” and he sighs again.

“Hey, now,” Arthur says, turning toward him, opening his hands in front of his chest, “you know I don’t like bein’ between you an’ Dutch, if I don’t have to be. If he really don’t think --”

“It’s not -- not like that, not really anything to do with a job,” Hosea says, shaking his head. “He --” Hosea looks away, coughs a little, sighs again. Arthur watches the way his breath puffs out as he coughs, white clouds around his face in the cold air, and he frowns. “He said he thought I’d break your heart, but --” and Hosea looks back up at him. “I think I’ll break my own, if I don’t say somethin’.”

“What the hell are you talkin’ about,” Arthur says, frowning at him, feeling his general sense of worry over Hosea rise back up into the back of his throat again. “John ain’t dead, and neither the law nor the O’Driscolls have found us yet, so I can’t really think of much else right now that’d do any heart-breakin’, other’n maybe decidin’ this miserable place is where we’re stayin’ for the rest of the year.”

“It’s not about here, now,” Hosea says. He sighs again, scuffs the snow with the toe of his boot. “It’s about that Blackwater job.”

“Which one,” Arthur asks, “ours, or Dutch’s? Cause I can tell you which one did all the heart-breakin’, there, and it weren’t ours.”

“Ours,” Hosea says, and Arthur frowns more, tilts his head.

“Okay?” Arthur says, dragging the syllables out. What the hell is --

“I -- was going to surprise you,” Hosea starts slowly, and Arthur notices how his voice has dropped in volume, how he seems unsure of himself, all of a sudden. “I thought -- I thought maybe you would have enjoyed the surprise.”

“With what, a million dollars?” Arthur asks, trying to joke, but Hosea doesn’t laugh.

Instead he sighs again, and he asks, “You know that one feller, the middleman, in our con, Merriweather?”

“Yeah,” Arthur says slowly.

“Well,” Hosea says. He looks over at Arthur. “Damn, this is breakin’ my own heart,” he says, not much stronger than a sigh. He lays his left hand between Arthur’s shoulder blades, on his back, a light pressure, not enough to pull Arthur close, just enough for Arthur to feel the weight of his arm.

“Mister Merriweather had quite a lot of property that we were fixin’ to move,” Hosea says, leaning closer, lifting his voice against a gust of wind.

Arthur nods. “I know.”

“And one of those properties was a big cattle ranch.”

“Yeah, Hosea, I ‘member,” Arthur says.

“Well,” Hosea says again. “I -- out on that ranch, they, uh, they had a couple litters of pups nearly ready to go, and I --”

Arthur has a hard time hearing the rest of Hosea’s soft, quiet explanation, caught up on _a couple litters of pups_.

“Wait, wait, hold on,” he says, holding a hand out, turning to look at him. “You --”

Hosea nods. “I, uh, negotiated it as part of our take, you know, pickin’ the best out of their pups, for you.”

“You were gonna --” Arthur starts, and he doesn’t know what to do with this information, so he just shakes his head, runs his hand over the back of his scarf-wrapped neck, amazed that this, of all the awful things that have happened to them in the week or so since fleeing Blackwater, _this_ is the thing that Hosea’s hung up on.

“Yeah,” Hosea’s saying, sadly. “I -- it’s just been such a bad year for us already, and I miss having a dog around, and --”

Arthur groans. “It ain’t your fault,” he tells him, but Hosea keeps talking, louder, over Arthur’s protest --

“ --I know, I _know_ , but I still felt -- I mean, hell, I _still_ feel --”

“ _Hosea_ ,” Arthur cuts in, and he turns on him, shakes his hand off of his back, puts his right hand on Hosea’s shoulders, looking him in the eye. “Copper was -- he was old, it was his time, it’s --”

But it had been fish that Hosea had caught that had been Copper’s last meal, half a year ago -- _fit for a king_ , Arthur had tried to tell himself -- and it had been Hosea and John who had helped Arthur bury him, and it had been Hosea and John who had loved that dog the most, of everyone in camp, after Arthur, and -- and even though Copper had been about fifteen years old, had lived a long and good life, even though no one was especially shocked at his passing, it had still felt like one more wedge between them, digging that dog’s grave, Arthur sad, John angry, Hosea affectionate and regretful and a little guilty.

Arthur sighs, the weight of this past Copper-less summer and autumn and winter coming to him heavily, now, thinking about it, despite his best efforts, these past six months, to try to let that weight go.

“Listen, Arthur,” Hosea says, and he’s leaning even closer to Arthur, now, both of them turning their heads to the side, to face one another and away from the openness before them, in the wake of a particularly harsh blast of cold air. “I’m an old man, and I --”

“No, no you ain’t,” Arthur cuts him off, but Hosea keeps going --

“I want to see you happy, son,” Hosea says, reaching out, gripping at Arthur’s shoulder, cutting Arthur’s argument off, earnestly meeting Arthur’s eyes. “I just want to see you happy. You, and John. So I thought -- but then all that damn _mess_ brought us to this miserable place instead, and --”

A wave of coughing cuts Hosea’s thought short, and he grips at Arthur’s shoulder for stability as he bends at the waist, coughs into the crook of his free arm, and both of Arthur’s hands are on his shoulders, holding him up, an unbelievable need to touch him, a spike of genuine fear, drawing his hands to him.

“Jesus,” Arthur swears, as Hosea hacks and coughs, “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, easy, Hosea, easy.” All he can think is that, of all the graves he doesn’t want to dig, here, now, on the side of this miserable mountain, Hosea’s is the one he doesn’t want to have to dig the very most. But the way his cough has flared, since they’ve been here, the way the weather and the defeat in Blackwater have obviously been pulling at him --

He’s clearing his throat, choking out, “I’m alright, I’m alright, it’s this damn thin air up here,” and Arthur frowns at him, not believing him.

“ _I_ wanna see _you_ feeling better,” Arthur tells him. “We better go back in,” he says, tugging at Hosea’s shoulder, but he shakes his head.

“Thought I’d go see about John,” Hosea says, pulling back from Arthur’s concerned hands. Arthur had barely realized how tightly he was still holding onto him, in the first place, until he pulls away, pats at Arthur’s shoulder.

“Okay, uh, let’s go, then,” Arthur says, and, even though he doesn’t much want to go and see John, face _that_ fear head-on, he turns, slings his left arm around Hosea’s shoulders, wanting to just get him out of the cold, starts walking that way with him, across the snow-covered little street between the cabins, both of them ducking their heads down, close together, against the wind.

As they’re both stomping the snow from their boots, on the porch of the women’s cabin, Hosea stills, turns to Arthur. “You know I love you, Arthur,” he says, soft, quiet, putting a hand on Arthur’s shoulder.

“I --” Arthur says, swallows heavily, swallows his own sense of undeservingness. “I know. I -- love you, too, Hosea.”

Hosea pats him on the shoulder, and Arthur can’t quite tell if he’s frowning or smiling, can’t read the emotions on his face. “I want to see you happy, son,” he says again, and he lets go, turns, into the house, and Arthur, still suspended in a moment of disbelief, shakes his head, follows him.

Hosea is greeting the ladies and telling Susan to go get some rest and adjusting the chair next to John’s cot and taking off his scarf and gloves and sitting down in the chair, and Arthur is still standing there in the doorway of the cabin, dumbly watching Hosea move around, listening to the little cough that’s rattling around in his chest that everyone else is acting like they don’t notice, until Tilly startles him, asks, “Okay, Arthur?”

“Sure, thanks,” Arthur says to her, shaking himself, walking deeper into the cabin, over to John’s little nook, pulling his gloves off, unwrapping his scarf. The house is warm, warmer than the cabin across the way was, and Arthur takes the second chair near John’s cot, pulls it up close to Hosea’s, unbuttons his coat, leaves his gloves and his scarf on the floor beside the chair, takes off his hat, sets it down on top of them.

John’s asleep, but restlessly, and Arthur lets his eyes skate over John’s flushed, bandaged, pain-contorted face, over the way Hosea’s frowning, can’t bring himself to look for too long. He focuses, instead, on the way Hosea’s holding John’s hand, strong and sure, on the way he’s leaning in, murmuring something to John that Arthur can’t hear, knows he’s probably not meant to hear, anyway.

Arthur sighs, reaches into his coat, gets his journal and his pencil back out, opens his journal back up to the sketch of Blackwater he was working on earlier, stares down at it for a long, thoughtful moment.

He decisively turns the page.

It’s behind him, now. Behind all of them. All they can do is move forward.

Arthur looks at the blank page, open on his lap for a long moment. Later, once he’s been able to think through all of this, he’ll have words to write, about this time. Later, he’ll write about how he thinks that the cold and misery will kill Hosea here, how he fears having to bury him, how much he loves him. But, for now, he looks up from the blank page, taps the end of his pencil thoughtfully against his chin, thinks about sketching his way through his fear.

Arthur watches, with his heart leaping into his throat, as Hosea leans down into John, presses a gentle kiss to his bandaged forehead, murmurs, loud enough for Arthur to hear, “Love you, my boy.”

Hosea sighs, heavy and deep and melancholic, and the end of his sigh catches on a cough, and Arthur bites down on his bottom lip, watching him, worrying, worrying.

Hosea clears his throat, sighs again, digs around in the inner breast pocket of his own coat, produces the small, slim novel he’s been reading lately, one of Dutch’s, Arthur thinks. Arthur watches, worry and affection still hot in his veins, as Hosea leans back a little in his chair, stretches his legs out long before him, keeps holding John’s hand in one of his as he opens his book with the other, running a thumb over John’s knuckles as he focuses in on the book, begins to read silently to himself.

Arthur looks down at the empty page in his journal, and his hand starts moving of its own volition, the scene before him blossoming on the page: Hosea, his face quiet and sad and lovely, reading and holding John’s hand, his body looking deceptively relaxed, with his legs all long and loose, like that. Arthur can’t bring himself to sketch out the finer details of John’s bandaged face, starts to shade in the fireplace, in the bottom corner of the page, instead; adds the window in the upper corner, the beautiful, deadly flecks of snowing dancing around outside barely visible through the old, grimy glass.

Arthur looks down at the page, and back up at Hosea and John, and he feels like something’s still missing. He closes his eyes, thinks, thinks, about how they got into this mess, about the conversation he’d been having with Hosea, about burying Copper, last summer, about Hosea’s kind, kind heart, and he knows, suddenly.

Arthur keeps sketching, filling in the missing elements, and he’s so intently focused that he doesn’t hear Hosea rustling next to him, after some time, doesn’t feel Hosea leaning over into his space, glancing over his right shoulder, down at his sketch.

“Oh, Arthur,” Hosea sighs, quiet, gentle, sad. Arthur startles, glances over to his right, sees Hosea _right there_ , in his space, looking over his right shoulder down at his journal.

Arthur looks back down at the sketch on the page, almost slams the book closed, but Hosea’s already seen it, anyway, so Arthur just sighs, shrugs. “I --” he starts, feeling some strange need to explain himself. “Felt like somethin’ was missing,” he says lamely, and he glances back up at Hosea, at the way his face has fallen, at the soft, soft regret in his eyes. The love.

Hosea sighs again, leans in, cups the side of Arthur’s head in his left hand, presses a kiss to the right side of Arthur’s temple, murmurs, “I’m sorry, son,” leans back, pats his shoulder.

Arthur ducks his head, feeling unworthy of so much gentle affection from Hosea, even as he cherishes it, relishes it, fears the day he may no longer have it. “ ‘S not a big deal,” he tells Hosea, but Hosea just shakes his head, sighs more.

Arthur looks back down at the sketch, and smiles, despite himself, at the way he’d added to the scene before him, at the way that Copper’s form had come so easily to his hand, even after all this time, at the perfect circle he’s in, in the sketch, napping on the foot of John’s cot. He’s almost disappointed when he looks up to the reality of the emptiness of it, the reality of no dog curled up at John’s feet.

“Let’s make a deal,” Hosea says. He’s relaxed back into his chair, but he’s still watching Arthur keenly. “Once we get West, get settled down, we’ll go get ourselves a pup. What do you say?”

Arthur laughs a little, shakes his head, but he still nods, ultimately, holds his hand out to Hosea. Hosea smiles, takes his hand, shakes it, overly official, like a true businessman. It would almost be comical, were it not for the fact that nothing about where they currently are is funny. “Alright, you’ve got yourself a deal,” Arthur says.

“Good,” Hosea says. “Good. Somethin’ to look forward to gettin’ off this mountain for.”

“Yeah,” Arthur sighs. He leans forward, puts his hand on Hosea’s shoulder. “We’ll get there, Hosea,” he says, trying to believe himself. “We’ll get there.”

**Author's Note:**

> this one goes out to @[blingeekingdave](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blingeekingdave) and @[texstudmister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TexStudmister) ily both sm and appreciate the soft saturdays TM with you, babes <3 <3 <3  
> [tumblr](https://inconocible.tumblr.com/)


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